Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Guest (Male): The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The miracle power of the word of God is a fact that is presented throughout the whole of the Bible. The interrelation of faith and the hearing of the word of God is at the heart of the whole process of transforming an individual so that he ceases to be a child of wrath and becomes a child of God. It is by the transforming power of the word, faith laying hold on the word, that a man ceases to be a child of disobedience and becomes a child of obedient faith.

Guest (Male): Over a half a century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the radio ministry which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible. The application of God's word as taught by Dr. Barnhouse is as relevant today as when he first taught over the radio airwaves decades ago.

The message we'll be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled Faith and the Word. The human ear has three tiny bones called the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup. Each of them must function together in order for you to hear. Three essential spiritual elements must work in conjunction in order for you to be saved: faith, the word of God, and the Holy Spirit.

How do these work together to convert a lost sinner into a child of God? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is Romans chapter 10, verse 17. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled Faith and the Word.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ we come unto thee, our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. We pray thee that as thy word goes forth in this hour, it may reach the hearts of thy people. We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We are at the point in the tenth chapter of Romans, the 17th verse, where we have the well-known verse, "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." The Revised Standard Version reads, "So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ." Phillips reads, "Belief, you see, can only come from hearing the message, and the message is the word of Christ."

Now, the first thing that strikes us in these later translations is that we are presented with the word of Christ and not the word of God. Fundamentally, it's the same thing, but the Greek clearly speaks of the word of Christ. Grammatically, it's an objective genitive and should be translated "the word about Christ." Still further, we should note that there are two different prepositions in the Greek, both of them translated "by" in the King James Version. A very literal rendering would be, "So then faith comes out of what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word about Christ."

Now, we've already dealt with the fact that the hearing has nothing to do with the ears. We are not concerned here with the physical process of the communication of ideas by sound waves. A blind man can hear through his fingertips as he reads the message in Braille. A deaf man can hear the message through his eyes as he reads the word of God. The hearing is a process that takes place in the soul as the word does its work and faith does its work, the two combining to bring life from the dead and light out of darkness.

We are not lowering the place of the written word of God when we accept the true translation of this passage. Faith comes out of hearing, and hearing through the word about Christ. This is true, but we must understand that the word about Christ is presented to us in the written word, the Bible. We have seen in some detail that the central theme of the Bible is the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that it is safe to say that God had no purpose in giving the divine revelation other than the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ through the presentation of the message of grace that would make it possible for guilty sinners to be transformed into the likeness of the eternal Son of God.

It's easy to understand how some writers, copying the ancient manuscripts, substituted the phrase "the word of God" for "the word about Christ." For the word about Christ is indeed the word of God. But at this point in our story, the emphasis is being laid on the saving content of the message. It reminds us clearly of Paul's great statement to the Corinthians. There had been some division among the people over the personalities of those who had preached the gospel in that city. Some of the listeners talked about Paul, some Apollos, some Peter, and some of Christ. Paul reacted strongly against such ideas.

"Is Christ divided?" he asks the Corinthians. He then goes on to say that there was no baptism in the name of Paul and expressed thanks that he had baptized so few of the converts, for he knew he had not been sent to baptize but to preach the gospel. And this preaching was not with the wisdom of human rhetoric, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. The revision has a beautiful translation of this text, "For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power."

Lightfoot wrote of this verse, "This expression shows clearly the stress which Saint Paul laid on the death of Christ, not merely as a great moral spectacle and so the crowning point of a life of self-renunciation, but as in itself the ordained instrument of salvation." Paul continues by saying, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." And he clinches his point by saying, "For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe."

There has been much written in our generation about the content of that preaching. There's a special Greek word in the New Testament, "kerygma," and it has received increasing attention from theologians during the past few years. Examine it closely. This kerygma is the content of the preaching about Jesus Christ, what they preached about him. And it is most evidently what is being set before us in our text. Faith comes out of what is heard, and what is heard comes through the kerygma, the word about Christ.

By now, it should be evident to all who have read the epistle to the Romans up to this point that the word about Christ is the whole message of the person and the work of the incarnate Son of God, who he is and what he came to do. It is especially bound up with the historical facts that make up his last days on earth, coming to the climax in his death, burial, and resurrection, and in his ascension into heaven. This is the message that must be proclaimed to all men. This is that which has the power to penetrate into the depth of a man's soul and bring new life.

This positive preaching of the truth about these historical facts is the overcoming of all the error that has accumulated about the cross of Christ. A modern writer, who was the founder of one of America's religious cults, says that the blood of Jesus Christ was just as efficacious when it was flowing through his veins as when it was shed on the accursed tree. Now, these words are a real illustration of the emptying of the cross of Christ of its power. For it was just the opposite of what she said that is taught throughout the New Testament.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "When I came to proclaim to you God's secret purpose, I did not come equipped with any brilliance of speech or rhetoric. You may as well know now that it was my secret determination to concentrate entirely on Jesus Christ himself and the fact of his death upon the cross." It was the fact of the shedding of Christ's blood according to the scriptures that provided the basis for man's salvation. Christ could not have been the Savior if he had been slaughtered by Herod's soldiers when the wicked king attempted to kill him by killing all of the male children of that region.

Christ could not have been the Savior if he had been thrown over the cliff at Nazareth, as the people attempted to kill him after his first sermon as recorded in the fourth of Luke. Christ could not have been the Savior if he had been destroyed in the tempest which Satan raised on the Lake of Galilee when even hardened fishermen were frightened. Christ could not have been the Savior if he had been stoned with stones on the occasion when the leaders of his people stirred up the crowd against him. It was only by being crucified that Jesus Christ could fulfill all the demands of the Old Testament prophecies.

It was only by being crucified that he became the transgressor of the law that God had inserted in the book of Deuteronomy: "Cursed is everyone that hangs upon a tree." Only thus could the Father strike Christ and make him the sin-bearer and the Savior. It is this death on the cross, and only this death, that can make it possible for God the Father to deal with human sin. We might put it as simply as this: a glass of water can dissolve a spoonful of sugar, but it cannot dissolve a stone. A glass of acid can dissolve the stone, but it cannot dissolve sin. Only the poured-out life of the Lord Jesus Christ, the shedding of his blood, makes it possible for God the Father to dissolve human sin, to deal with it. Sin cannot be dealt with in any other way.

Now, it is through the word about this inner meaning of the death of Christ that faith is built into the life of an individual. What God is telling us is that faith feeds upon the word about Christ, growing and growing as we have more of that word. It should go without saying that I am not exalting the printed page above the living Lord Jesus Christ. The word about Christ is not to be taken as a mechanical detached thing, but as that which leads us into the heart of all that he is and all that he came to do for us. It is not by reading the Bible through and through or by memorizing chapters and verses that one is going to grow in faith.

Reading the Bible is important and memorizing scripture is important, but faith must be rooted more deeply than the mind and memory. It is the personal absorption of the truth that is going to cause growth in the life of faith. The secret of faith is a simple one. It is feeding upon Jesus Christ. This is of the utmost importance in developing our Christian life and experience. Faith comes from a message that is heard. Faith does not come from a message that is merely listened to. This is what our Lord meant when he said more than once, "He that has ears to hear, let him hear."

We sing a hymn at times: "More about Jesus in his word, holding communion with my Lord, hearing his voice in every line, making each faithful saying mine." Now, it is that absorption of truth which enriches faith. It is here that we find the inner meaning of what the gospel means when it tells us that we must eat Christ's flesh and drink his blood. Christ said, "Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."

Now, when those who heard him argued about the meaning of his words, he made it much more clear. Christ said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me."

Now, there are only three possible ways of taking these words. The literal acceptance would be fantastic. Christ was not offering to be the victim at a cannibal feast. Now, the second interpretation centers around a horrible misunderstanding of Christ's institution of the Lord's Supper. He took bread, blessed it, and broke it, saying, "This is my body broken for you." And after the supper, in the same way, he took the cup and said, "This is the blood of the New Covenant shed for many for the remission of sins. All of you drink of it."

Now, there have been those who have imagined that the bread and the wine could be turned into the actual body and blood of Christ and that people who partake of the Lord's Supper would be in some magic fashion getting the literal body and blood of the Savior. But such a text must not be taken literally. Christ also said, "I am the door." Would anybody dare for a moment to think that he was teaching that he was the wood and the hinges of a door? Christ also said, "I am the way." Would anybody dare think for a moment that he was teaching that he was the mud and the stones of a road?

So it was that when he said, "This is my body," he had not thought of any magical service at which real bread would continue to look like bread though it would be transformed into something entirely different, even his body and blood. No, the only possible truth in the light of all the Bible is the spiritual meaning of this passage. Christ spoke of the bread and the cup and said, "Do this in memory of me." And thus it is that we who have new life in Christ are brought by God the Holy Spirit to contemplate the wonders of the cross of Christ.

We take a piece of bread and as we crush it in our mouths to assimilate it into our bodies, we remember that the Lord Jesus Christ was crushed by the Father on the cross in order to become our spiritual food. Thus it is that under the bread and along with it, we who are believers partake of Christ's holiness, Christ's righteousness, Christ's love and compassion. We remember that it was by his death that we were originally redeemed from sin and given the position of children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

As we grow in the Christian life, we discover that it's possible to feed upon the Lord Jesus Christ apart from the symbols. We do not have to be at the communion table in order to remember his death. Wherever two or three are gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus, he is in the midst to commune with them. Faith looks back to the report that was given about the sufferings of our Savior and grows by feeding on the truth. Faith comes out of the message, and the message is the word about Christ.

It follows from all this that the more we know of God and Christ through the Bible, the revealed word, the more faith we will possess. In teaching the Bible, the word of God, it is always necessary to preserve an even balance. We would not be like the man in Luther's parable who was so concerned lest he fall off one side of his horse that he fell off the other side. I have been stressing the danger of being satisfied with the knowledge of the written word and therefore losing the living reality of knowing Christ himself. Let me balance this by pointing out that it is in the knowledge of the Bible that we are going to find the increase of our faith.

It may be true that a man can come to a limited knowledge of the Savior with only a limited knowledge of the Bible, but it must be understood that a man can never come to a great knowledge of the Savior without a great knowledge of the written word of God. Faith comes by getting to know God personally. We can learn the ways of God and can fall into line with his desires and plans by seeing in the Bible how he has acted under various circumstances as he has dealt with men. As we see him in action, we come to understand him and to know him. As we come to know him, faith will grow with great increase.

Now, it's true that there are people like the Pharisees of Jesus' day who spent so much time with the mechanics of reading the divine revelation that they lost sight of the Revealer and were not ready to accept the Lord Jesus Christ when he came. But in leaning away from the Pharisaism, we must not neglect the fountain of living waters. As a rule, the more time we spend with the Bible, the stronger our faith will be. If we are truly saved, God will see to it that the word does its supernatural work of breaking down the pride of our hearts and bringing us in true humility to the place where Christ dwells in our hearts by faith and we manifest him to those who are around us.

Faith comes out of what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word about Christ. This text can be applied in two other ways: to those who believe it and who want to spread the word that others may believe, and to those who have not yet believed it. In this text, there is still one more call to the missionary task. Faith comes to men by hearing, and if they are to hear, we must tell them. And that means that we must go with the word of God to the whole of the human race.

Do not imagine that God is going to save men by direct intervention from heaven without a human instrument. All who are saved have the report brought to them by someone who has already been saved. If someone wishes to think that he was saved apart from a human intermediary, he has not understood the nature of the transmission of the gospel. If you say that you were saved all alone in your room, it was by thinking on the message that you had heard from someone else, whether father or mother as a child or from some preacher of the gospel.

If you were saved through reading a Bible in a hotel room, it was through the work of the faithful Gideons who put the Bible there. If you were saved through some other means, it was the belief of others who had the gospel tract printed, the sermon broadcast, the song planted in your mind. All believers are obligated to be spreading the word of the gospel. You read the story some time ago of the five brave young men who died in Ecuador in the jungles as they sought to take the gospel to one of the fiercest and most brutal tribes in the world. Their whole hearts moved out in love towards these men.

And it is thus that God reaches others. You may be sure of the fact that it will not be many years before there are many Christians in that tribe. And they will learn to know and understand that the love of these young missionaries that went even to death was the love of Christ that loved them through these missionaries. This is the way the message came to you, and this is the way that it must go on to others.

Read the story of the first Gentile believer. In the book of Acts, we have the story. Cornelius was brought to the knowledge of Christ through Peter's report. When Peter was telling the leaders in Jerusalem about the coming of the gospel to a Gentile, he recounted how God had led him and at the same time had led Cornelius. Peter said, "We entered the man's house and he told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon Peter who will speak to you words by which you shall be saved, you and all your household.'" The Greek is the same both in the Acts and in our text. Peter will speak to you words by which you shall be saved. And faith comes by the hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

It is in the glory of this knowledge that we fling forth the word. We let the word go everywhere and God takes care of the lodgment in the heart. There is a famous publisher in France whose main product is dictionaries and encyclopedias. He adopted as his slogan, "Je sème à tout vent" (I sow on every wind), and illustrated it with a dandelion head, already broken and its tufts floating away. Now, if a maker of dictionaries can sow on every wind, how much more must we who are believers in the eternal word of God about the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, let fly on every wind the truths that have saved us and which will save you and others.

And a final application of this text is to be made to those who have not yet believed. Our text says that faith comes. If you do not have faith, realize this truth: faith can come. It comes by hearing the word of God. Open your heart to the truth of God's word. Listen to it as it is brought to you on the radio. Find a faithful preacher of the word of God and go to listen to him proclaim it. Bend your ear to the hearing of the gospel. Listen and ask the Lord to apply it to you.

Faith comes. Faith comes while you listen and heed. If you will open your heart now and willingly pay attention to the good news that God has nothing against you, that he loves you, that he sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for you, that Christ did die for you personally, that he was buried, and that God raised him from the dead on the third day as the guarantee of your salvation. If you'll open your heart to this, you will find faith coming to you. Faith comes. God has planned it that way.

God the Father has done his part in sending Christ and in giving us the Bible with its message of Christ. Christ has done his part in giving his life for us and in making the word alive to us. The Holy Spirit does his part in being the instrument by which the written word came and the instrument by which the word is quickened within us. And your part, your simple part, is opening your ears to hear the truth. If you do that, you will find that God has made all this true for you. Faith comes and it will come to you.

And our God and Father, we pray thee that the Holy Spirit shall take this message to each heart and use it to thy glory. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): Has the spirit of God, working in your heart through the word of God, brought you to a living faith in Jesus Christ? You have been listening to Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible, a ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. We hope you have benefited from today's message entitled Faith and the Word.

To listen to more Bible teachings by Dr. Barnhouse, you can tune in anytime, anywhere around the globe via the Internet by visiting us at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is available by calling us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888. Today's message again is entitled Faith and the Word, or simply request message number R10-18.

We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled The History of Sin. The reality of sin is a stumbling block for many people when they consider the existence and character of God. If God is loving and all-powerful, then why does he allow sin, evil, and suffering to exist? In this free booklet, Dr. Barnhouse carefully and scripturally outlines the history of sin and examines its nature, extent, and course. Ask for your free copy of The History of Sin when you call or write.

Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to promote a biblical understanding and worldview. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformation theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide contemporary Christian teaching which will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place.

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